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In Honduras, the Centre for Justice and International Law, in partnership with women’s rights organisations, civil society organisations and feminist organisations, worked tirelessly over five years to campaign for the passage of “La Esperanza Protocol”. This was published in December 2021 and is now recognised as the international standard for the investigation and response to threats and attacks against human rights defenders. Thanks to the work of WROs, the protocol includes a specific focus on the contribution of women human rights defenders to strengthening democracy. It also recognises…
Spotlight Initiative has supported the review and reform of legal systems and frameworks to ensure that root causes, consequences and risk factors of violence against women and girls are comprehensively addressed and the specific needs of individuals facing intersecting forms of discrimination, such as LGTBQI+ individuals are effectively addressed.
In Liberia, Spotlight Initiative conducted a legislative review of the Inheritance Law, Rape Law and Domestic Violence Law with government officials and CSO representatives to ensure the inclusion of a comprehensive approach to targeting all…
In 2022, the Spotlight Initiative Latin America Regional Programme was able to map and collect more than 600 gender-based violence prevention strategies from 18 countries, generating important recommendations on effective GBV prevention strategies. Some of the recommendations include:
Reinforcing critical approaches, intersectional analysis, and taking a multicultural dimension
Identifying conditions and barriers of access to information and state actions and policies
Enhancing sustainability and scaling up of processes, and leadership that promotes the building of social norms that…
In response to the alarming rise in femicides in Mexico, particularly in Chihuahua State, Spotlight Initiative worked to strengthen legal frameworks against gender-based violence. Despite existing laws like ‘Norma Oficial Mexicana’ and the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence, femicides continued to increase, driven by deep-rooted gender inequalities and weak law enforcement.
Spotlight Initiative undertook a comprehensive assessment of Chihuahua’s legal policies with Grupo de Accion por los Derechos Humanos y la Justicia Social A.C. (Action Group for Human Rights and…
Spotlight Initiative in Honduras has supported the ‘Cure Violence’ model – a transformative approach aimed at reshaping social norms to address the alarming rates of femicide and violence against women and girls. Honduras has the highest femicide rate in Latin America at 6 cases per 100,000 women in 2022, with a culture of impunity where 96% of such crimes go unpunished. This UNICEF-supported initiative involves mobilising communities to change social norms in areas affected by gang violence and trafficking. It uses ‘violence interrupters’ to lead community dialogues and efforts to identify…
The Spotlight Initiative Latin America Regional Programme supported eight national surveys, conducting 9,600 interviews across Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. The survey provided data on social perceptions of violence against women and girls and femicide. The results showed that verbal abuse and femicide are perceived as the most commonly occurring forms of violence against women and girls, while control over women’s lives was perceived as more acceptable than other forms of violence against women and girls. Further, LGBTQ and older women are…
In 2021, Spotlight Initiative partnered with the National Sports Secretariat in Argentina to launch the #NoEsNormalEsViolencia (It’s Not Normal, It’s Violence) campaign. This campaign aimed to end derogatory comments, ridicule, sexual harassment, and sexist expressions that belittle women and LGBTQI+ people, deepen inequalities and constitute forms of VAWG.
They developed a set of campaign materials, including posters, signs and pamphlets of varying sizes that were designed to go in different areas of sports clubs. For example, some materials were designed to go in the bathrooms, some on…
In 2020, Spotlight Initiative’s Latin America Regional Programme provided funding to support a Latin American coalition of WROs, feminist organisations and civil society organisations led by the Centre for Justice and International Law in Honduras. This coalition was advocating for the passage of a new protocol called “La Esperanza Protocol”, one of the first of its type, which aims to improve the investigation of and response to serious threats and attacks against human rights defenders.
A coalition of over 20 CSOs, women's and feminist organisations, spearheaded by the Center for Justice…
Spotlight Initiative’s overarching goal in its Theory of Change (ToC) is to ensure that all women, especially those who are marginalised and vulnerable, live free from violence and harmful practices. Together with its partners, Spotlight Initiative aims to make concrete changes in six Outcome Areas or Pillars to end VAWG. Changes in these six Outcome Areas contribute to achieving SDG 5 and SDG 16. ToC “if/then” logic statements were then crafted for each Outcome to describe the desired results.
Example: IF/THEN TOC for Outcome 1 (Legislative and policy frameworks)
IF
(1) Women and VAWG…
In Argentina, the Women's Office of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, the Specialised Prosecutor's Unit on Violence against Women of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Security of the Nation are responsible for recording, systematising and analysing information on femicides. To promote inter-agency communication and harmonise the gathering and measuring of national femicide data, the Spotlight Initiative programme in Argentina provided technical assistance to the agencies to construct comparable indicators to measure the violent deaths of women in the country.
In…